


if the sky is falling down

by buck_begins



Series: Maddie Buckley week 2020 [3]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Very Brief Mention Of Violence, just felt like we needed more maddie and athena
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:01:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25776304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buck_begins/pseuds/buck_begins
Summary: Maddie never considered herself someone that was easily scared. After everything with Doug, she had felt like she was more prepared for anything. If she survived that, she could survive pretty much anything. She wouldn’t consider herself invincible, but it was how she dealt with everything that happened to her. She needed to believe that something bad couldn’t happened to her again. Somehow though, she never thought that she would get mugged.Day 3: “you want to tell me about it?” + angst
Relationships: Maddie Buckley & Athena Grant
Series: Maddie Buckley week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1862182
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	if the sky is falling down

Maddie never considered herself someone that was easily scared. After everything with Doug, she had felt like she was more prepared for anything. If she survived that, she could survive pretty much anything. She wouldn’t consider herself invincible, but it was how she dealt with everything that happened to her. She needed to believe that something bad couldn’t happened to her again. Somehow though, she never thought that she would get mugged.

L.A. wasn’t exactly a safe city. She knew that. But it was an out of sight out of mind kind of thing. She dealt with calls about robberies and muggings all the time. But she was distant from them, they happened to people on the other end of the phone. It happened to Josh, but he was targeted, it wasn’t random. She never expected it would happen to her, but people never seemed to think it would happen to them. No one ever wants to think the worst could possibly happen to them.

It had been a normal day at work, nothing too stressful, no natural disasters or anything crazy. She didn’t usually walk alone to her car, but she was on a call a little longer than usual and didn’t have anyone left on the shift. Their cars were in a garage right next to the call station, she really hadn’t thought much of it. Every other day had been safe, why shouldn’t that one have been. 

The man came out of nowhere, seemingly hiding behind one of the cars. All of the self defense classes she had were useless as soon as he pointed a gun at her. She froze, she didn’t know if she would have been able to fight back anyways. There was only $50 in her wallet, and she gave it to him before he ran off. A tiny part of her was grateful he didn’t take her phone or keys, but the majority of her just kept thinking ‘why me?’ 

She didn’t remember getting in her car, and she certainly didn’t remember driving to the Grant-Nash household. Her mind must have known that Chim was at work, and she didn’t want to go back to a place where she would be all alone. Somehow she knew Athena had the day off, might have been something she overheard at work, she wasn’t sure. Her mind was just a complete mess of thoughts, and blank at the same time. She didn’t realize she was crying until she knocked on the door. 

Athena opened the door, and immediately ushered Maddie in. She took one look at the tears and shaking hands and knew something had happened. She lead Maddie towards the couch, having her sit down and then brought her a glass of water. 

“You want to tell me about it?” Athena made sure to keep her voice gentle, she didn’t want to force Maddie to talk if she didn’t want to. Whatever had happened had clearly shaken the younger woman up. It wasn’t something Athena was used to seeing.

It took a minute before Maddie felt comfortable to talk. “He just came out of nowhere. I was just trying to get to my car. He - he only took the cash I had, it wasn’t a lot, but he didn’t take anything else. I just froze up, I felt helpless. Everything happened so fast, I don’t even know why he targeted me.” Once she started speaking, the words kept tumbling out of her mouth. She didn’t mean to be sitting her crying on Athena’s couch, but having someone who made her feel safe made her feel a little better. 

Athena held out a box of tissues to Maddie. She needed a minute to make sure she wasn’t thinking with the cop part of her brain, but with the comforting friend side. There would be time for her to help file a report if that’s what Maddie wanted in the future, but comfort was much more pressing. “You never know how you’re going to react until it happens. I’ve frozen on calls before. It’s not your fault, unfortunately these things happen sometimes.” If Athena had to guess, Maddie was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. She hadn’t heard of any muggings near dispatch recently, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. She would look into it next time she was on shift. 

“I haven’t felt this way since Doug showed up at my house. He started yelling at me, and all I could think was ‘oh god, this is the end.” She took a tissue and wiped her eyes. It still didn’t feel entirely real that this had happened to her. She knew what shock could do to a person, somewhere distantly in her mind, but none of that information seemed to be helping her.

“But nothing did happen. You got yourself out of it. You did good. It wasn’t the end.” Athena reached out, giving Maddie’s hand a squeeze. “How about you stay with me the rest of the day? I’ve got some baking I’ve got to do for Harry’s class, and I could use an extra set of hands.” It was something that would help Maddie to calm down, and keep her mind off of what happened. Athena knew sending Maddie back to be alone would be disastrous. 

Maddie gave Athena a small nod. She knew physically she was okay, just shaken up. But mentally she knew she wasn’t going to get over this for a while. It wasn’t a big thing, in the grand scheme of everything that had happened to her, but it was unexpected. She had known that eventually Doug would come back and find her. But she really had never thought something like this would happen. She eventually made a police report, but the guy was never caught. It would take her a while before she felt comfortable walking out to her car alone again. It would take a while before she wouldn’t jump at ever sudden noise. It would take a while for her to process what had happened to her, but she would never feel that naivety about what could happen to her again.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to yell at me on tumblr @bucks-little-hop


End file.
